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Recovered immunity is weak “Because science”/CDC

By Meryl Nass, MD | October 24, 2021

“Because science” is new slang terminology that refers to bogus explanations or justifications for why things are done a certain way during the pandemic.

I have come to love the term because it encapsulates the contempt for the public evidenced by officials who usually know little about science but regurgitate “the science” to justify some unjustifiable policy.

Aaron Siri, a wonderful attorney, has challenged US health agencies on many of their illogical and often illegal pandemic policies.

He just posted the exchange he has had with CDC over its refusal to acknowledge the presence of immunity to COVID in the recovered.

While the whole document is interesting, the very end contains some of CDC’s “because science” answers.

Let me explain what CDC has been doing over the past year:  whenever there is strong evidence that shows a CDC claim or policy is dead wrong, CDC’s “scientists” conduct a bogus study which can involve cherrypicking endpoints, choosing specially selected time periods, and a variety of other shenanigans to produce “evdience” that calls into question the real science. They have done this with masks, lockdowns, recovered immunity, and vaccines for children, that I can recall off the bat. I worked with a group of scientists who tried to reproduce the CDC’s calculations. But we couldn’t, because even though the CDC “scientists” were friendly and seemingly open, they never would provide enough information on their data set and their algorithm(s) for us to check their work. Clearly that was CDC policy, even though it flies in the face of standard ICMJE medical publication standards.

And that is what they did in this case. Despite mountains of evidence regarding the strength of recovered immunity, CDC just cited its own bogus study, while leaving the door open in case “the science” changed in the future. Where is the shame?

And, the agencies don’t mind dragging litigation on forever, since it is your money that is paying for it.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

Taxi driver freed from Guantanamo Bay after 17 years of brutal torture with no charges

FILE PHOTO. © Reuters / Lucas Jackson; (inset) An official Guantanamo Bay photograph of Ahmed Rabbani. © US Department of Defense
RT | October 24, 2021

A Pakistani taxi driver will leave US detention at Guantanamo Bay after 17 years behind bars. Mistaken for a wanted terrorist, the man suffered horrific torture in American custody, despite never being charged with any crime.

Ahmed Rabbani’s release was announced on Friday by Reprieve, a human rights NGO. Rabbani had been unanimously cleared for release by the prison’s Periodic Review Board, made up of senior officials from six US agencies, including the State Department and Department of Homeland Security.

Rabbani’s journey through the underbelly of the US’ post-9/11 security infrastructure began in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002. Mistaken for wanted terrorist Hassan Ghul, the taxi driver was arrested by Pakistani authorities outside Ghul’s apartment complex and sold to American personnel in the country.

Information gleaned from an associate of Rabbani arrested on the same day was used to arrest several suspected Al-Qaeda operatives, including a supposed member of Osama Bin Laden’s security detail. However, Rabbani was never charged with any crime, and is not believed to be involved in terrorism.

Nevertheless, he spent more than 545 days after his arrest being tortured in a CIA ‘black site’ in Afghanistan. The torture inflicted there on Rabbani was detailed in the US Senate’s 2014 torture report, and included long periods of being shackled with his hands outstretched over his head, an agonizing position that led Rabbani to try to cut off his own hand to end the pain.

Testimony from multiple detainees held in the same CIA prison describes permanent darkness, cells flooded with excrement and infested with vermin, beatings, sleep deprivation, being buried in simulated graves, being stripped naked and doused with cold water, and being denied bathing facilities for months on end.

According to Reprieve, Rabbani’s interrogators knew that “they had the wrong man,” but tortured him anyway. After more than a year in the CIA facility, Rabbani was transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp on US territory in Cuba. He would spend the next 17 years there, without a charge or trial date.

His case attracted international attention, and in 2018, Rabbani wrote an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times describing physical and sexual abuse by guards, force-feeding, and repeated hunger strikes to protest the conditions of his imprisonment. At the time of the op-ed, Rabbani said that he was suffering from “stomach problems so acute that I cannot consume hard food without vomiting blood,” and was being denied digestible food.

Conditions in Guantanamo chipped away at Rabbani’s mental health. “There is no morning and no evening,” he wrote. “There is only despair.”

“Ahmed’s clearance is long overdue,” said Reprieve attorney Mark Maher. “For those of us who have supported him, the feeling is one of relief, tempered with sadness for all he has lost… but we won’t celebrate until he is back with his family in Pakistan and able to hug his 19-year-old son for the first time.”

Of the 780 people detained in Guantanamo Bay since the facility opened in 2002, 732 have been transferred elsewhere or released, 38 remain there, and nine have died in custody. President Joe Biden has promised to close the notorious prison before he leaves office, a promise that was made, but not kept, by his former boss Barack Obama.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 2 Comments

Biden has pledged that ‘America is back.’ But as peace shatters in the Balkans, does that mean yet more US misadventures?

KFOR forces patrol near the border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia in Jarinje, Kosovo, October 2, 2021. © REUTERS / Laura Hasani; Inset © REUTERS / Evelyn Hockstein
By Julian Fisher | RT | October 24, 2021

With warnings that fresh tensions between Serbia and Kosovo could unravel the decades-old peace deal that put an end to bloody fighting in the Balkans after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the US is increasingly split on what to do.

Earlier this month, the SOHO forum in New York City hosted a debate between Scott Horton, long-time libertarian and anti-war radio host, and Bill Kristol, the neoconservative thinker and one of the ideological architects of America’s post-9/11 world order. The subject of the debate was US interventionism, its merits and historical record.

Predictably, Kristol offered vague niceties that attempt to recast America’s legacy as that of the “benevolent global hegemony”, a term which he himself coined in 1996 when describing the country’s role in the world. Reflecting on the wars in Iraq, Kristol simultaneously said that America “didn’t push democracy enough” and also “may have been too ambitious.” In short, he acknowledged mistakes were made, which is an admission that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, and yet still falls short of accountability.

However, whereas American actions in the Middle East leave a lot to be desired for Kristol, he insists that the US intervention in the Yugoslav Wars during the 1990s was a success. As he put it, the Balkans was “one case of a war that was worth it and that I think had pretty good consequences.” As if on cue, the Balkan pot is beginning to boil once again.

An unresolved conflict

Kosovo has been a potential tinderbox in Southern Europe ever since the end of the war of 1998/1999. A recent row with Serbia, from which it unilaterally declared independence, has led to a new escalation in tensions.

Beginning in September 2021, Serbs living in Kosovo launched protests against authorities hassling travelers who enter the territory with Serbian-issued license plates, prompting a mobilization of armed Kosovo police forces, roadblocks, and traffic jams near the border. Two vehicle registration offices were vandalized.

The EU mediated a temporary fix in September that involves covering up national insignia on license plates with stickers, until a special working group in Brussels determines a more permanent solution sometime within the next six months. Whether this will be sufficient in bringing about immediate calm remains to be seen, however. Since then, further clashes have erupted between police and protesters near Mitrovica.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has condemned the use of violence by Kosovo police against ethnic Serbs. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in mid-October, calling for talks between Pristina and Belgrade and a diplomatic solution to be respected by all sides.

As the situation heated up, NATO quickly ramped up patrols throughout Kosovo, including the North. “KFOR [Kosovo Force] will maintain a temporary robust and agile presence in the area,” the US-led military bloc said in an official statement earlier this month, intended to support the implementation of the EU-brokered solution. Last week, Kosovo’s minister of defense, Armend Mehaj, flew to Washington to meet with Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Dr. Colin Kahl at the Pentagon. The subject of the discussions was “bilateral security cooperation priorities”.

These moves are only the latest instance of US-led posturing in Kosovo. It was with American support that Kosovo launched its campaign for international recognition in 2008. Many major countries, representing most of the world’s population — including Russia, China, and India — have not recognized it as a sovereign state. Kosovo’s persistent claim to independence is what makes an issue as seemingly benign as license plates a question of war and peace.

In the background is still the 1999 Kosovo War, which was the site of NATO’s infamous bombing campaign against Serbia that led to the deaths of at least 489 civilians, according to Human Rights Watch. In April of 1999, NATO deliberately targeted Serbia’s Radio Television station, killing 16 civilians, according to Amnesty International. At one point, the US “mistakenly” bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three and wounding some 20 more, in what turned out to be the only target picked by the CIA over the course of the war.

To this day, the US maintains a military base, Camp Bondsteel, near Urosevac, Kosovo, as part of the international Kosovo Force (KFOR).

Two states in one 

To the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has also reappeared in international news coverage. Against the backdrop of the EU’s Western Balkan Summit in early October, the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said last week that the parliament of the Serb Republic, one of two entities that together make up BiH, would soon vote to undo some of BiH’s state institutions. He included the military, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) and the tax administration. These and others were established after the signing of the 1995 Dayton Peace accords and are not enshrined in the constitution.

Dodik wants an independent Serb Republic without compromising the territorial integrity of BiH, and he claims he has the support of seven EU member states, though he has not said which ones.

The genesis of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s recent headache is an amendment to the Criminal Code that makes various forms of inflammatory speech a punishable offense. The law was enacted in July of this year by the Office of the High Representative, an international “viceroy” with the power to impose binding decisions and remove public officials.

Russia has maintained that this appointed position is outdated, with a statement from the Foreign Ministry saying it was high time to “scale down the institute of foreign oversight over Bosnia-Herzegovina, which only creates problems and undermines peace and stability in that country.” Moscow also remains critical of attempts to integrate the country into NATO, insisting there is no consensus among the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina when it comes to joining the US-led bloc.

Playing to a different tune, already last month Washington tried to reprimand Dodik for his “secessionist rhetoric”. In a meeting just a few weeks ago, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar warned of “nothing but isolation and economic despair” for the people of the Serb Republic. According to a transcript that Dodik shared with the press, he told Escobar that he doesn’t “give a damn about sanctions,” adding, “I’ve known that before. If you want to talk to me, don’t threaten me.”

In the US, various Balkan-American organizations have released a joint statement calling on Congress and the Biden administration “to immediately initiate steps to rebuff the attempts by the government of Serbia to unravel the region’s peace and security”. Citing both aforementioned developments in Kosovo and the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the statement demands a reinvigoration of “NATO enlargement as a priority for the region.” It suggests that what’s at stake in the Balkans is America’s legacy: “America invested too much of its own resources into this region to allow revanchist actors to decimate nearly a quarter century of progress.”

However, what does America investing its resources actually look like? In early 1992, before the war that scarred Bosnia and Herzegovina, all parties involved had already come to an agreement, the Carrington–Cutileiro plan, to divide Bosnia and Herzegovina into cantons along Serb, Croat, and Bosniak lines.

At the last minute, however, the then-US ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmermann, met with the leader of the Bosniak majority, Alija Izetbegovic, in Sarajevo, reportedly promising him full recognition of a single Bosnia and Herzegovina. Izetbegovic promptly withdrew his signature from the partition agreement, and shortly thereafter the US and its European allies recognized Izetbegovic’s state. War ensued a month later, in April 1992. The US eventually worked its way back to new partition negotiations that echoed the talks held prior.

As the New York Times reported in 1993, “tens of thousands of deaths later, the United States is urging the leaders of the three Bosnian factions to accept a partition agreement similar to the one Washington opposed in 1992.”

Zimmermann is quoted as saying at the time that “Our hope was the Serbs would hold off if it was clear Bosnia had the recognition of Western countries. It turned out we were wrong.”

Returning to the Horton-Kristol debate from earlier, Horton cited America’s underhanded opposition to the Carrington-Cutileiro plan, and the devastating consequences, as a case in point of US interventions impeding, rather than promoting, peace and stability.

President Joe Biden declared at the start of his administration that “America is back.” Taking a look at the history of US interventions, this could spell trouble for the Balkans.

Julian Fisher is a policy analyst at the Russian Public Affairs Committee (Ru-PAC). He writes about Russia-U.S. relations, American foreign policy, and national security

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Surgeon Writes…

By Toby Young • The Daily Sceptic • October 24, 2021

An NHS surgeon who’s contributed to the Daily Sceptic before has sent us an email offering us his perspective on the current NHS ‘crisis’. It’s a reminder that even though the current pressure on the NHS cannot realistically be attributed to Covid hospital admissions – which remain at around 5% of the total – that doesn’t mean that the NHS isn’t under strain.

There are various debates about whether or not the NHS is under pressure with pundits rightly pointing out that the NHS is not under pressure due to Covid-related disease. I think at this stage this is an unhelpful diversion. The fact is there is a big problem and trying to disprove it by just looking at Covid is missing the bigger picture.

The NHS is under a lot of pressure due to processes unrelated to Covid workload. While hospitals are not yet full to the brim, the overall activity levels are higher than usual for certain regions (whether this is due to the catch-up effect, neglect, the iatrogenic effect of recent non-pharmaceutical or other interventions/measures, etc.). The main crisis is related to staffing. This labour shortage has been noted in many sectors of the economy, but the staffing crisis (mainly non-doctoral) in the NHS has been chronic and worsening for years. This year tipped the balance (psychological exhaustion, physical exhaustion, sickness absence, track and trace, etc.). In our region hospitals are routinely cancelling (relatively non-essential) surgery due to lack of staff required to either run operating theatres or wards/ancillary services. Hospitals are routinely running extra activity on Saturdays to try and catch up on cancer work. This is a weekly occurrence not limited to the place I work. Factor in the very long (self-created) waiting lists and the winter (which has not even started), and the crisis could become unmanageable.

I am pessimistic. Regardless of the Covid workload, the Government may use a real crisis in the NHS to justify more pointless non-pharmaceutical interventions and vaccine passports (complete nonsense from a medical, ethical and social perspective) out of desperation, misconception, or both.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 2 Comments

Physicians and the Vaccine Tyranny

By Blaise Edwards, M.D. | American Thinker | October 21, 2021

I find myself in the position that I must use an alias for fear of reprisal. Those days may be quickly coming to an end, as hospitals are denying requests for vaccine exemptions with impunity. I will likely soon be out the door, with nothing to lose. Even if I survive this round, if the “pandemic” continues, it won’t be long before I am shelved like a can of spam.

Doctors need to be called out. From early in the pandemic, it was like a mass hypnosis or forgetfulness of everything we had learned in medical school. Immune system knowledge was shelved and replaced by government dictates. The thought of early outpatient treatment with “off label” drugs that could modulate the immune system was forbidden. We essentially told patients that they had to go home and wait until they were sick enough to be hospitalized, then treatment would begin. Imagine telling all diabetics that there is no metformin, Glucophage, or insulin. Would we really wait until patients are in diabetic ketoacidosis, and then treat them only at the hospital? It is medical malfeasance of a grand scale.

We physicians gave up our training and our reasonable medical thought process. The reasons are multiple. First, it was the easy way out. Second, many of us are employed and fear reprisal. Third, despite what the public thinks, we physicians are not bold leaders, we tend to be sheep, and are afraid of having an entire institution ostracize us or our colleagues to think us crazy.

As we got to the point of vaccine rollout, doctors were not using the scientific method, questioning and challenging prevailing hypotheses. They kept their heads down, closed clinics, converted to telemedicine, and pushed only the jab.

I had conversations with doctors who are supposed experts in virology and immunology denying the lasting immunity of natural infection. Conversations about natural immunity:

“I have antibodies.”

“But they will wane.”

“But I have memory cells.”

Dumbfounded look.

Really, are these the leaders we want?

Other conversations about the safety of vaccines:

“The vaccine is safe.”

“No, we would have shut down any trial in the past after even 100 deaths.”

“This is more serious.”

“But the survival rate is about 99.6%.”

“It’s killing people.”

“So is the vaccine”

“You can’t believe VAERS.”

“It was set up to help protect the public, and if anything, it is underreporting side effects.”

“You’re a conspiracy theorist.”

Or conversations about early treatment

“You must get the vaccine, it is the only “proven” treatment, there are no other treatments.”

“Really, ivermectin has eradicated COVID in India, parts of Mexico, Japan….”

“It is a horse dewormer.”

“It won a Nobel Prize in medicine, is a WHO essential drug, and has been around for decades with a great safety profile.”

“No, only the vaccine works.”

“But it is failing”

“You are a denier and a conspiracy theorist.”

“Sigh….”

Lately, it has been all about getting 100% of the population jabbed. For what reason? I am not sure, and some of the more detailed and investigated theories scare me. I shudder to think. But last year’s heroes are being labeled selfish and villainous for not getting the vaccine. Hospital systems have abandoned their community’s health and ignored early successful outpatient treatment in favor of huge government subsidies for inpatient and ICU treatment. The success of these treatments was not great, but that is another article. Now we have the same hospital systems turning their backs on their own employees. Basically, health providers have a choice, get shot, or get fired. How does that help? Both vaxxed and unvaxxed can spread the virus, so it doesn’t help anyone. It only helps the hospital to get more government money by meeting quotas.

I, for one, will remember that when we faced a real crisis, the hospitals and many physicians chose money and profit over their own community’s best interest. Perhaps it is time for groups of physicians to get back to running their own healthcare clinics and hospitals. We used to have a code of ethics. We used to put patients first. Not anymore.

As for physicians, those who are blindly following the government edicts are culpable in a moral atrocity. Bullying and deriding patients who chose to refrain from this still experimental therapy is an abomination. (You will say it isn’t experimental anymore, to which I would say that just because the government broke its own rules regarding approval, doesn’t make it legal or right). Patients have sincere beliefs for making their choice. Respect their thoughts. Do you yell as much at smokers, drinkers, fornicators, drug abusers, etc? No, I think not. I think you chose to fit in because it gives you a sense of righteousness.

And going so far as to encourage vaccination in children and pregnant women is crazy. There is blood on the hands of any physician who does this. With children, there is no benefit to the vaccine, only harm. They would serve themselves and society better with natural immunity. The vaccine hasn’t been studied on women and their babies. It is pregnancy category X (unknown) but being pushed wholesale on these poor women without proper studies. Shame on you, doctors who are doing this. I certainly have lots to answer for when I meet my maker, but this is on another level.

I beg physicians to get back to basics, remember all the epidemiology and immunology that bored us to tears in school. Investigate the real literature and take a stand. Society needs us to do this. Even if you have been vaccinated, help those who are fighting for their lives. Stand up against this forced vaccine tyranny. Support those who have legitimate reasons for declining the jab. If you don’t stand up now, who will stand up for you when you are faced with your choice of yet another booster or your job.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 7 Comments

University receives $750k of federal funds to stop reporters from creating “negative unintended outcomes”

The government continues to get involved with shaping journalism

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 24, 2021

Researchers at Temple University received $750,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop a tool that warns journalists that they are about to publish polarizing content. The NSF is a federal government agency focused on supporting research and education in non-medical fields of engineering and science.

The initiative is part of NSF’s “Trust & Authenticity in Communication Systems.” It is called the “America’s Fourth Estate at Risk: A System for Mapping the (local) Journalism Life Cycle to Rebuild the Nation’s News Trust.”

The focus of the project, according to a report on Campus Reform, is creating a system that alerts journalists that the content they are about to publish might have “negative unintended outcomes” such as “the triggering of uncivil, polarizing discourse, audience misinterpretation, the production of misinformation, and the perpetuation of false narratives.”

The researchers hope that the system will help journalists measure the long-term impact of their stories, that go beyond existing metrics such as likes, comments, and shares.

One of the researchers involved in the project, Temple University’s professor Eduard Dragut, said that the system will “use natural language processing algorithms along with social networking tools to mine the communities where [misinformation] may happen.”

“You can imagine that each news article is usually, or actually almost all the time, accompanied by user comments and reactions on Twitter. One goal of the project is to retrieve those and then use natural language processing tools or algorithms to mine and recommend to some users [that] this space of talking, this set of tweets, which may lead to a set of people, like a sub-community, where this article is used for wrong reasons,” he added.

Journalists and other players in the news industry will be involved with the project, which already includes researchers from other universities including Boston University and the University of Illinois-Chicago.

“We want journalists to be part of the process, not just the mere users of the product itself,” Dragut said. “So you can imagine sort of an analytics tool that informs the journalists and editors and other people involved in this business how their products or how their creative act is used or misused in social media.”

He added that the project is attempting to “create a collaborative environment with both social media platform[s] and other organizations like Google” because of their expertise.

“We have some preliminary conversation with Bloomberg, for instance, and we will have to define exactly how they are going to help us. Google has an initiative to help local news, and we are working to create a relationship with them, and there are others,” Dragut told Campus Reform. “This product will not work unless we are successful in bringing some of these high tech companies into the game.”

Another researcher involved in the project, professor Lance Holbert, said that, for now, the misinformation the project is focusing on is that of the spread on local media.

“Certainly some topics over time will become more versus less interesting, but also we’re focused here initially on local media as well, so each locality may have different topics or particular points of interest that come up in the news,” he said. “We’re trying to keep this generalizable across topics.”

Holbert noted that misinformation is not “happening in the political spectrum” alone.

“[It’s happening] in sports, it’s happening in economics,” he said. “Like a few years back, I know, an example from Starbucks where there was a sort of a campaign on Twitter [saying] that Starbucks is targeting, in the wrong way, African Americans, which was wrong.”

The NSF is expected to further fund the project when its first phase becomes successful.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

The COVID-Catholic Parallel – been here before?

Gregory’s Blog | October 13, 2021

We see unprecedented use of ‘unprecedented’ today. Yes, it applies to putting entire nations under house arrest. Yes, it applies to the near-universal wearing of masks (more accurately muzzles). Yes, it applies to needing a passport to be normal. But perhaps the entire phenomenon we are experiencing is not unprecedented.

Let us look back in time to 380, when Rome became the superspreader of Christianity by making it their empire’s official religion. Within 100 years the Roman Empire collapsed but despite the death of its host, Christianity survived and for over 1000 years the head of the Catholic Church was the most powerful figure in all of Europe.

Most rulers of nations, then and now, have one core raison d’être, which is to protect us from other versions of themselves. But the Catholic Church would tolerate no other versions. Its Pope reigned supreme, having spiritual authority over kings, dukes, princes and local overlords. As the Lord’s Prayer tells us “…thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Your local priesthood conveyed the will to be done on earth, working hand in glove with the local lord, whose temporal power was recognised by God’s official mouthpiece, the Pope.

You may ask how the church came to have and maintain such power. The answer is simple: faith and fear.

They had agents throughout the land, with a church in every town. The priest class, from archbishops down to parish priest, were the most highly-educated and respected sector of society. The priesthood was a sought-after secure profession, and people had faith in the truth of what the priest told them. It was often sound advice they could find nowhere else. The church had a near monopoly on education, with part of the core curriculum being God and creation, Jesus and miracles, sin and salvation, as well as good deeds, forgiveness, and useful guidance. Most priests were good people, people of faith, and following their advice was the passport to Heaven.

Then there is the fear. The devil can manifest anywhere in the world, tempting people to stray from the path of righteousness. The devil can be lurking unseen within any one of us, prompting urges that God wants us to supress. We must be on our guard from those he may have corrupted. We must follow the priest’s advice to avoid the fearsome prospect of Hell.

Believers knew that if they behaved badly during their 50 or so years of this existence, they would suffer a miserable and horrific existence in Hell, forever – like eternity. What a terrifying prospect! This was the picture the church taught and most people absolutely believed what they were told by the highly educated priests. Bastards, born out of wedlock, were a product of sin and not welcome in society. Those who missed church on Sunday were avoided. Just speaking with these dangerous people could infect one with sinful thoughts.

Not all the ‘common’ people bought into the church’s teachings or went to priests for advice on things spiritual or material. Some chose a more direct spiritual interface with the living world. Many were women who also practiced unlicensed healing, whether through herbs or ‘occult’ practices invoking natural energies of the earth and human body. Tens of thousands of these women were burned, drowned or tortured to death as witches, for their deviant beliefs.

Of course, being a God-fearing church goer did not stop people from being sinners but at least you were trying and could confess your sins to the priest, do some penance and be forgiven. Without that escape clause, the ungodly sinner was doomed to Hell.

Those who wrote or spoke publicly in contradiction of the church’s teachings were guilty of heresy and their books burned and banned, as well as the heretic at times. To speak disrespectfully of things holy was considered blasphemy, punishable as a serious crime, occasionally warranting death. This unfortunate situation still prevails in many Islamic nations, with a religion 600 years younger than Christianity.

The Christian church does not have the power it once held over the minds of those in so-called Western cultures. There are still some who believe in a God who created the Universe in a few days and did it all for the benefit of humankind, before throwing us out of the Garden of Eden. Most, if not indoctrinated early, instinctively reject the idea that we are born with the burden of sin and can only find spiritual truth and salvation through the son of God, whom we crucified. The spiritual credibility of the church has not been helped in recent years by the paedophile scandals surrounding its priesthood.

Today we are witnessing a new “religion” taking hold and this one has nothing to do with spirituality, yet has spread faster than any before. It has gripped the minds of billions across the planet and is also powered by faith and fear, with an enemy as invisible as Hell and the Devil himself. Curiously, it has had its greatest success to date in the ‘West,’ perhaps filling the fear vacuum that has been created in the world’s traditionally Christian cultures.

Today’s priesthood is embodied in the medical industry, staffed by highly trained professionals with secure careers, for whom the public has high regard. Just as we once needed priests to act as intermediaries to God, we now need trained doctors as intermediaries to our bodies and guardians of our health. Many people are sadly out of touch with their mortal frame and have unquestioning faith in doctors knowing best – the high priests of health.

The medical establishment does not like competition for its services, doing whatever it can to ban or denigrate healing practices other than their own, whether herbs or naturopathy, prayer or acupuncture, homeopathy or reiki. Theirs is the only true path to health, and all other routes are portrayed as fraught with danger.

We do not know how well organised Christians were before the Romans assimilated them – before Christian belief was standardized and regulated at the Council of Nicaea. We do know that before the healing profession was dominated by the World Health Organisation, The Centre for Disease Control, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, there was full medical freedom of choice for the individual. In 1880 there were more homeopaths in the USA than allopathic doctors, while mechanics earned more than either of them. It is no accident that the WHO, CDC, and GAVI are largely funded by the pharmaceutical industry, and headed by their chosen men and women. They have become today’s equivalent of the Vatican during its 1000 years of dominance. They claim a monopoly on truth and woe betide those who question or counter it.

Notable physicians, respected virologists, vaccine designers, even a Nobel Prize winner have countered the official narrative and lost their positions, been discredited and denounced.  They are denied any further involvement in the hospitals, clinics and practices spread across the land as thickly as were early chapels, churches and cathedrals. Popular speakers, performers and entertainers have had their bookings cancelled for refusing to be vaccinated, or for questioning the push to global vaccination. We could view these outspoken characters as being excovidicated from the medical and media establishments.

It takes a lot of faith to accept being injected with a partially tested new-concept mRNA injection. Taking the second jab could be seen as one’s baptism into the Covidian Church. Like it or not, it is an affirmation and commitment.  And unlike the splashing of holy water and utterance of sacred words, it may be difficult to decouple our immune system from the one implanted by Big Pharma. This new system will need an upgrade every 6 months to keep your internal software up to date. Where have we heard this before?  What will system crashes look like?

Just as going to church does not prevent God-fearing folk from sinning, taking the injection does not prevent Covid-fearing folk from getting the virus, or from spreading it. But, we are told, if the case is bad enough to need hospitalisation, the sufferer will be less likely to die. Considering that the Covid survival rate, before vaccination began, was over 99.9%, how much the vaccine increases it is, perhaps, a moot point.

In today’s somewhat free society, it is okay to declare that the Queen is a shape-shifting lizard, okay to accuse the Bush family and their associates of taking down the three towers (the twins and WTC 7); okay to accuse Hilary Clinton of running a paedophile ring and drinking an extract of tortured children.

It is decidedly NOT okay to counter the narrative of the BIG PHARMA’ three – to suggest that Covid-9 is not an existential threat;  to recommend tested known treatments for it; to disclose that natural immunity is widespread and better than jabs; to publicise the hundreds of thousands of documented adverse reactions to the injection. Those who question or counter the narrative on any level are guilty of (forgive me) ‘blaspharmy.’ Thou shalt not speak against the trinity of the CDC, WHO and GAVI.

Instead of burning books today, they ‘burn’ the online platforms of those who question or challenge the narrative of Big Pharma. YouTube channels are shut down without warning, with all their content removed from view – troves of information that was approved and online for years. Twitter accounts are terminated. Much like the bad old Soviets used to remove people from official photos when they fell out of favour, today Wikipedia entries of repeat blaspharmers can be erased, with Google searches relegating links to 20th places. This all may be more ‘climate-friendly’ than burning books, but does immense harm to the free flow of ideas, the emergence of truth, and the connected feedback loops that power positive evolution.

The parallel has been made with the Papal precedent. There is much of positive value to gain from Christian teachings but they are not and never were the only source of spiritual and moral guidance. Neither is the medical establishment the only viable source of sound and effective  advice on healing and health. It’s biggest player, Big Pharma, does exceedingly well out of poor health.

We are at a unique and yes, unprecedented turning point in the story of our species. Do we remain independent human beings, able to freely associate and communicate with each other, how and where it suits us? Do we remain able to choose what we eat, and travel by the means of our choice, all while having primary responsibility for our health and well-being?

Or do we welcome being merged with outside agencies, starting with one that manages our vital immune system with regular injections? Vaccine passports, once established, would (for greater ease) morph into a body implanted chip and soon also serve as door key, passport, credit card, wallet, bus/train ticket, bar tab, membership card – and desirable citizen monitor.

We know how once wild animals were so attracted by regular food and a roof that domestication became possible. Are we sacrificing the last vestiges of personal freedom and privacy to become part of a digitally managed body of people? What are the consequences of this? We do not know, but the ‘religious’ suppression of opposition to its rapid implementation does not bode well. Technology has and can make our lives easier without being under central control by coercive bodies, sometimes headed by psychopathic personalities.

If it looks like an externally managed future is being forcibly rammed down our throats that could well be because it is. What can we do about it? The most powerful tool we have is mass non-compliance, which begins with each and every one of us, including small businesses, and those big ones with customer interests at heart. If enough employers, employees, diners, care workers, café goers, hospitality staff, shoppers and so forth refuse to pretend there is an existential killer on the loose, the scheme will immediately fall apart. And that’s another article…

– – – O – – –

For an up-to-date overview listen to eminent cardiologist Dr Peter McCollough speaking in plain English on Oct 2, 2021. Check his outstanding CV here.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

Several German cities halt use of e-buses following series of unresolved cases of fire

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | October 24, 2021

The potential risks of electromobility are being closely examined in Germany after a third major fire in a bus depot apparently caused by an electric bus. Public transport companies are taking action after the electric bus allegedly triggered a fire in Stuttgart last week, newspaper Die Welt reports.

The Munich public transport company, MVG, is taking eight similar e-buses out of service until the cause of the fire in Stuttgart has been clarified. The fire may have started while the bus was being charged in the depot, according to investigators, who assume that a technical defect may be the cause of the fire. The 30 September fire completely destroyed 25 buses in the depot, including two with electric drives, causing damage worth millions of euros.

The Stuttgart transport company, SSB, has also halted the use of electric buses in the city. The incident followed a similar fire in June in a bus depot in Hanover, which destroyed the hall and nine buses. E-buses were then recalled but are expected to resume service in November. In April, a fire at the Rheinbahn depot in Düsseldorf caused damages totalling several million euros. Investigators determined the fire had been triggered by a technical issue but could not clearly identify the cause.

While the number of electric buses in German public transport doubled last year compared to 2019, a recent survey found that 58 percent of Germans had doubts about the “environmental compatibility” of electric mobility.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | 1 Comment

NATO’s new secret plan for nuclear war & space battles with Russia risks spiraling into a new arms race

By Paul Robinson | RT | October 24, 2021

Tensions between Russia and NATO are at an all-time high. But instead of seeking a way off the ladder of escalation, the US-led bloc’s new plan for hybrid war risks accelerating an already dangerous lethal arms race with Moscow.

There’s a concept in international relations, almost one of the first that students learn, called the ‘security dilemma’. It’s hardly rocket science, but it’s something governments and armed forces planners seem to consistently forget when it comes to making policy.

The idea is basically this: Country A feels threatened by country B; it therefore takes some measures – such as increasing its defence spending – to make itself more secure; but when country B sees what country A is doing, it in turn feels threatened, and so takes reciprocal measures of its own. The result is that country A ends up less safe than it was to start with.

The dilemma is that if you do nothing to strengthen your defences, you’ll be insecure, but if you do something you’ll end up worse off because of the counter-measures the other side will take. What do you do? If countries A and B both take action to defend themselves, they will find themselves in an ever-escalating process – what theorists like to call the ‘spiral model’, but which in public parlance is often called an arms race.

The obvious way out is to break the spiral. Avoid escalating and resort to other measures, such as negotiation and arms control. All it may take is for one side to unilaterally step back, and the vicious circle will turn into a virtuous one.

It’s pretty basic stuff, but again and again, state leaders choose to ignore it and prefer instead to march down the path of the spiral. So it is today in the case of Russian-NATO relations, which are as classic an example of the security dilemma as you could possibly hope to find. Deep down, there’s no fundamental reason for conflict, but mutual suspicion leads to a continuing ramping up of reciprocal measures that deepen the suspicion, leading to more measures, more suspicion, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum.

For instance, earlier this year, the Russian military undertook a series of exercises close to its Western borders. From a Russian perspective, these were purely defensive. From a Western perspective, they appeared potentially threatening, justifying in turn Western exercises that NATO claims are entirely for defence, but which Russia considers a threat, prompting further Russian measures.

The latest round in this dangerous process is the announcement this week that NATO has developed a new ‘masterplan’ to defend against a possible Russian attack. The plan itself is secret, so we don’t know its contents, but it’s said to focus on non-conventional war, including nuclear strikes, cyberwarfare, and even war in space. Geographically, it covers the whole spread of NATO’s border with Russia, from the Baltic to the Black Seas inclusive.

In part, this is just what military institutions do: They plan for possible future conflicts. The Russian military almost certainly also has similar contingency planning in place for a potential war with NATO. It would be very odd if it didn’t. In this sense, NATO’s new masterplan shouldn’t in theory be seen as a cause for alarm. Moreover, NATO insists that its purpose is not aggressive. Rather, the plan’s aim is deterrence, thus its formal title: ‘Concept for Deterrence and Defence in the Euro-Atlantic Area’.

However, as students of the spiral model know, reality is much less important than perception. Deterrence is a matter of signals. One sends a message to potential enemies that if they attack, they will suffer devastating consequences. The problem is that although this message may be clear to the one doing the signalling, it may not be so clear to the one to whom it is sent. You think you are deterring, but they think you are threatening. They therefore respond in kind. In this way, deterrence ends up being counter-productive.

This doesn’t always happen, but in this instance, it seems to be the case. Some aspects of NATO’s announcement seem unnecessarily escalatory, in particular the references to nuclear war. We’ve come a long way from the musings of nuclear strategists like Herman Kahn and Bernard Brodie, who tried to calculate how it was possible to fight and win a nuclear war. One shouldn’t be surprised that when other people hear such talk being revived, they’re not deterred but alarmed.

Unsurprisingly, Russia’s reaction to NATO’s new military concept has been decidedly negative. “There is no need for dialogue under these conditions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, continuing: “this alliance was not created for peace, it was conceived, designed and created for confrontation.”

From the Russian point of view, NATO’s actions justify Russia’s recent decision to sever ties with the Atlantic alliance. Rather than bringing Russia to heel, NATO may merely be driving it into an ever more hostile position.

In this way, the West’s perception of Russia as a threat becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The same, of course, could be said the other way around. For if the West perceives Russia as threatening, it is because of things that Russia has done – as it sees it, for its own defence. For instance, NATO argues that what has made its new plan necessary is Russia’s strengthening of its armed forces and its recent advances in military technology.

The more Russia defends itself, the more it incites NATO. And the more NATO defends itself, the more it incites Russia. A security dilemma par excellence. The risk both parties run is that the situation will continue to spiral further and further into ever more dangerous territory. Already this spring, Europe passed through a period of high tension in which it looked entirely possible (although unlikely) that war might erupt between Ukraine and Russia. Anything that contributes to a further worsening of the situation is therefore thoroughly undesirable. NATO’s new military plan, it seems fair to say, runs the risk of doing just that.

Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history and military ethics, and is the author of the Irrussianality blog.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Youth from Gaza survives Israeli airstrike that killed his father and three sisters

Defence for Children Palestine | October 14, 2021

Yousef A. from Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip survived an Israeli airstrike in May 2021 that killed his father and three of his sisters. He is still recovering from his injuries.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment